A Study on the Development and Characteristics of the “Marketization of Welfare” in China

Abstract

To cope with an increasingly serious aging problem, the Chinese government has introduced private and foreign investors’ participation in the development of elderly social welfare services and now encourages the effective use of marketing services. This paper focuses on the marketization of welfare in China, seeking to understand the development of the market for elderly care and to explore the characteristics of the marketization of welfare. The results of the investigation show that the trend toward marketization in China’s welfare has developed from “Family to Market”, and that private providers include a high proportion of elderly care providers, so that marketization has advanced through “privatization”. In addition, the market features of selection, price and competition are supplied in China’s welfare market, but administrative regulation and supervision are weak. Therefore, this paper argues that the current state of the welfare market in China is nearly that of a free market. However, this situation results in serious problems, such as unequal competition among service providers, and disparities in service usage due to high costs.